To Breathe
by Larkspur Quince
Summary: Not all vampires have the strength to defy temptation. These are the recollections of a young European prodigy who is made a vampire in 1822. A century later he meets a wonderful Italian soprano, but is he strong enough to resist her pungent pepper scent?
1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

—

_Her face is in the stones. It's in the reflection of the water in the lake, the golden light of the dying sun against the mountains. When the wind twines itself around the trees and dances through their leafy hands, I can smell her. I hear her voice in the birds' voices, her song bursting forth from them. I feel her presence in the air; her skin touches mine through the long fingers of the waterside grass. She is everywhere. I can find no place where her memory does not live._

_It doesn't matter how long it's been. One year, ten, fifty, a hundred. I wake up to the memory of the indentation her body made on the other side of the bed, but when I turn to see her, she isn't there. The bathroom is cleared of her things—her cosmetics, her slippers, her robe. I have a box full of memorabilia from our life together, her career, mine. There were those who knew her and they asked me if I have kept anything sung by her, and I told them that I had, but I that did not know where that chest had gone._

_But I do. I remember where it is, I do, try as though I might to forget it. I put the things of hers I kept in one of the empty rooms of the house—it seems that I can't let myself lose the remembrance of her, even if I desperately, hopelessly want to. I can't disentangle myself from what she was to me. She is everywhere. I cannot escape._


	2. I

I

**I**

—

I think that, in order to best understand my story, it would be wise if I told you a little about myself. I was born in 1799 in Paris. My given name was Ansel Eugène Broussard. My mother was an actress, or at least she'd been one, before the revolution gained momentum and the people had stopped going to shows in significant numbers. My father was a political writer, and the pamphlets he managed to get published were incredibly controversial. I have trouble remembering what about his writing distressed people so, but even as a young thing I knew he was in the wrong. I remember on several occasions our small house being the target of little but furious riots by those who disagreed with the pamphlets or would have suffered had my father's writing become actuality—we often had broken windows and doors, and my mother, Clémence, would gather my younger brother Lucien and me to her and hide us in the bedroom closet. For years afterward, I would actually think of closets as the safest place, an act which colored my behavior curious shades in my later years.

But to continue, because of my mother's occupation, I grew up in a house full of music. I would sit with her at the old piano and touch the keys until I had made a song; I sang with her, and she taught me to read and understand provincial written notation. I soon found that music had become a part of me, an extension of who I was. I loved it so much that I found its challenges fascinating and it took me almost no time at all to unlock the secrets it seemingly freely yielded. I became adequate, then proficient; remarkable, spectacular, unbelievable. By the time I was ten, I had written music on every spare sheet of paper in the house. It became clear that I was exceptional. I was more than that: I was a prodigy.

Clémence wanted me to go to Vienna when I was fifteen, as that was then the musical center of the known world. My father wanted me to stay in Paris and learn law.

"Much more useful," he told my mother. "He'll get more out of it."

But my mother refused to buckle. France was in a constant state of upheaval, of turmoil; we began to wonder if chaos would ever release its hold on us, tight and merciless. It did not help that we were constantly terrified of the people outside our home, waiting to hurt us. We had moved several times because the mob had set fire to our residences. We had to leave by backdoors to escape their attention—they might have killed us, had they caught us. My father's newest leaflet had upset more people than usual, and as my mother pleaded for my future, hot war on the Broussard household waged outside.

"No, Alphonse! _Écouter sa musique!_" she implored her husband, her narrow face flustered and her blue eyes wide, her dark curling hair free and mad. "Listen to what he has written! He is incredible!"

So I played for him. As the sky grew dark and the throng of protestors turned orange and ugly in the light of their torches, my little hands flew across the face of the piano. I played a piece of which I was very proud, "_Au Milieu du Jour à Paris_"—"In the Middle of the Day in Paris"—inspired by the magical afternoon Clémence had taken me by the hand and walked me through the city. She wanted me to know what kind of place I was living in, and while she tried to explain to me the political turmoil of the time, I was blinded and deafened by the colors and the people and the sound, the wonderful sounds, sounds which I tried to replicate on my piano and work into my music for weeks afterward. I do not know if she knew I was barely listening to her, but she bought me a flavored ice treat just the same that day.

The music flying from my small hands—soft and white, not like my father's—quickly mounted and matched with the horrifying sounds outside. Alphonse later told me that what he heard was like the future and the present, all at once, that he could hear my opportunity in the music, but the exquisite piece was muffled by the angry cries outside. He said he knew then that I had a greatness in me that was in danger of being stifled by Paris. He said the way was clear.

Five years later, I auditioned for the headmaster of the Wien Konservatorium, which was then perhaps the most prestigious and esteemed schools of music in all the world. Not long thereafter, I kissed my parents and young brother goodbye, and moved to Vienna, Austria, where I would study for the next five years at the Wien Konservatium with a huge scholarship. The years I spent there were the five defining years of my life up to that point. I learned the ins and outs of music; I came to understand how it could be absolutely glorious and which techniques could produce which ends, and why, and what they meant. My love of music became obsessive, and I excelled at everything. I do not mean to sound arrogant or untruthful here: I am not after compliments or your good opinion; the fact of the matter is that I _was _that good, and I _could _write and play music like that. I had so much music in me then that I sometimes worried it might rupture and split me in two. But it didn't, it just spilled forth from me like water. I could not for the life of me stop it. I had no other desire in the world to compose music. I had become a raving recluse. While I was a capable pianist, I did not have the power in me to channel that wonder inside me adequately alone. No—I found my true love in writing music, and I took great joy in hearing musicians' interpretations of what I had created. Their abilities inspired me further.

I had written countless pieces by the time I was in my early twenties, gaining welcome praise from the community. It turned out I had been marked the rising star—"the young Mozart" is what they called me, but Mozart was much more talented than I, I assure you. I suppose by then I had risen to a certain degree of fame, but I admit I was oblivious to it in my fervor—music was like a sickness for me, but with no hope of a cure then, not that I would have wanted one! And I believe what made my music so memorable and rendered it so well-loved was not because of the use of innovative new techniques or new styles, not complicated rhythms or technical genius. I wrote with the old ways, unforced and true, and my music was simple and often legato. My goal was not to triumph or stun with fast and furious procedural passages, but to draw an emotion from the listener. I did not see the need to employ methods of which a person inexperienced in music would have no vague conception, but to form a picture or a scene in my mind and to dictate it in sound. I was told my pieces were haunting, so beautiful in their poignant slowness that they were felt more than heard. I wrote music, I thought, that the soul might sing.

At age twenty-three, I had learned everything the prominent university could have taught me, and I was the obvious successor to the director of the Wien Symphonieorchester, a job which I relished and coveted after the current conductor, Bernhard Ebbe, who had held the position for almost forty years, retired. I wanted the job like there was a fire in my belly. It would be the chance to write music and have it performed, if I wanted, as well as to direct some of the greatest pieces the world had ever heard. I was more excited than words could have said that I had been nominated, young as I was, by the university for this incredibly impressive position. It was the dream that came to me in sleep, the vision I saw with my waking eyes. It was more than life to me.

Six months after my nomination was submitted, it was accepted. It was to be formally announced at a great ceremonial dinner party that, if I chose, I would be the new director of the Wien Symphonieorchester, the supreme symphony in the country. I would also be the youngest person to have headed an orchestra of its size in history.

I did not make the party, and I did not have the chance to accept.


	3. II

II

**II**

—

The week before the announcement was to be made, some of my school friends wanted to throw me a small, intimate party to celebrate. It was thrown by the best friend I had there, Emil Aachen, and his British girlfriend, Marie, at their little house in the center of town, not far from the university. It was only about fifteen people in all. It was quite lovely, actually, if I recall.

Marie's sister Rachel was in town to see Marie's oboe recital. Her boyfriend Lane, a record producer, had accompanied her.

Rachel was a pretty girl. She had a round, pink face and a chin-length brown bob. But the man at her side, with the coal-black hair and the terrifying eyes of the same color, was more beautiful than anyone. Anyone who had ever lived, I was sure.

It seemed that the whole evening gravitated towards him. He was charming and witty, funny, observant, polite. Truly he was the epitome of class. Lane quite outshone his girlfriend by miles, but no one seemed to mind that he had become the center of everything, beautiful as he was. Rachel could hardly speak for distraction.

I trust you can probably figure out where the story goes from here. Lane insisted on walking me back to my miniscule apartment so that he could speak to me about music, and being as charming and as beautiful as he was, and that the topic he had chosen was the one I could never refuse, how could I possibly have said no to him—how could I have denied that face, the rare splendor of his eyes, the dark fire flashing behind them? Of course I couldn't. I can't say that I was attracted to him, not sexually, but I wouldn't have put it past me to think so. I was enamored with his charm and his unaccountable grace. He sent Rachel along with Marie and Emil, promising to meet with them later, after we had had our conversation.

"I can't let Ansel escape without picking his brain just a little," he quipped, smiling broadly. I exited among a flourish of congratulations and well-wishes, for which I was most grateful and a little embarrassed. My friends were very kind; I missed them when I could no longer enjoy their company. Still do, sometimes.

Lane and I meandered along the darkened streets of Vienna. He asked me about music composition, getting the right sounds, how to truly convey a message through music. I answered him as best I could, not quite sure why I had suddenly become an expert on these things. And he listened with rapt attention, so thoughtful and interested and inquisitive it put me on edge a little.

As we turned down to Obere Donaustrasse, Lane grew contemplative.

"Tell me," he said quietly, "do you think you'll be writing music forever?" I was surprised at his question. I had never considered anything else.

"Certainly," I said, and I was aware of the thick strange accent that marred my English, contrasting sharply with Lane's speech, crisp and bright. But he spoke neither French nor German, it seemed, so I forced myself to speak in slow sentences, trying to make my English as clean as possible. "Music is more to me than life. If I could not write music, I do not know what I would do. But I will not live for _ever,_ you see, so I must stop sometime."

I could almost feel Lane's charismatic smile in the darkness.

"Oh, of course. It's a pity, though, that talent such as yours will someday cease to exist," Lane sighed, a grin still curling his lips. I struggled with his rapid English and it took me a moment to process what he had said to me. I had just pieced it together when he continued, his words still too fast. He moved closer to me, so close I—was I imagining it, or was there no body heat radiating from him? It felt as though there were no one next to me at all. "But you would if you had the chance, wouldn't you? Compose for all eternity."

"Well, I—I suppose, yes, but you are asking silly questions. Nobody lives forever."

Lane's soft laugh caught me by surprise; I was having trouble following him in the first place, initially with his rapid English and then with his abstract inquiries. If he had said something funny, it had obviously escaped my attention.

"Your talent is unbelievable, Ansel. The world needs you to write your music. Human life is so short—think of all the things the great people of history might have accomplished, had they the time to do it. I can't stand to see mortal death steal all the possibilities, rob humanity of what could have—should have!—been. You, Ansel, you are something spectacular, and you deserve the chance to change the world with your craft."

His tone was so smooth and so charismatic, but I could not for the life of me understand what he was saying. It was maddening! I walked dumbly on as we came to Rembrant-Brücke, spanning across the Donau (which you will all know as the Danube). I desperately wanted to understand him, but if he had any idea of this, I did not know.

If I had, I would have told him that eternal life does not promise greatness. Often, I would have told him, death comes at the height of power to save one from the nightmare of old age and death. Sometimes the best thing is to extinguish a roaring fire before it has a chance to fall to nothing more than a flicker, showing the world its embers—the little pillars and wood that kept the fire alive, black and rotten and lifeless, the stage for wonder no one wanted to see.

So I kept my silence, unable to respond coherently. We had just begun to cross the bridge when Lane suddenly grew very close to me, pressing his—cold—face close to my neck. I did not pull away, though it was strange. An English thing, perhaps? And then, with his corpse-arm around my waist, his lips at my ear, he whispered,

"I want to give you that chance, Ansel."


	4. III

III

**III**

Lane flew on top of me, and I felt, screaming, as each of his jagged teeth punctured the skin of my neck. It felt like the side of a mountain had collapsed, each piece heavier than the last, pinning me under a rockslide of white and beautiful boulders—boulders, shoulders, hands, and teeth. There was nobody out, it seemed, in all of Vienna that night, which I did not notice at the time but it's a fact that haunts my memory now.

Lane drank from me the blood of life deeply enough that had he left me, I would have died that night, there on the bridge over the Danube. But what am I saying—I did die, a premature mortal death, confused and terrified as I was. And as I began to writhe in pain as mortality left my empty body, I felt the man hoist me over his strong shoulder and carry me off like a hulk of meat. After that, I cannot tell you what happened, for I remember little and what I can recall is shrouded in pain and begging for a death that would not come.

For three days I knew nothing but agony. I was scared; I had no idea what was happening to me, only that I was sure little steel daggers, like shrapnel, had replaced the blood in my veins. My heart had turned to iron, turning as if a pulley, reeling in my organs closer and closer to the surface until I was convinced they would explode through my skin.

And then, just as abruptly as it had come, the pain receded. Slowly, at first, and then it vanished entirely. When I woke—for I do not know what stupor had exercised power over my consciousness, so I think of it like sleep—I found I was in the dark. A delicate shred of pale light peeked into the place from a miniscule window close to the ceiling. It was the only light.

I found I was lying down in a strange angle on a very dirty and worn wood floor. Slowly I sat up, unsure of where I was. But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized my body was no longer swathed in hot torture. The organs and nerves that had hurt so violently just moments before were calm now. In fact, as I felt myself for injuries, I came to feel that within my chest, no heart was beating.

I stood up. I couldn't make sense of this. I had no idea what to do, and I was alone.

The little bit of light was reflected off a brass doorknob, so I crossed the little room and opened the door. It turned out I was in an abandoned apartment outside of the city that had been damaged by a huge fire, rendering everything black. It appeared to be late afternoon on a cloudy day, which was a blessing, for I did not know then what would happen to me when I stepped into the sun.

I should tell you that I am not proud of what I did thereafter. Lane did not appear to have any interest in teaching me what I was and how to wield my new powers. He cared only that I live forever, that I compose forever. In fact, I never saw him again, though I am sure he is out in the world somewhere. And if he is, and if he finds this, I very much hope its message is clear to him. I know who he was, as will soon be revealed.

I walked along the empty streets and I saw the world as if it had undergone a complete transformation. Everything was incredibly clear. My brain worked so much more quickly and completely than it had ever done in its human years. I can still remember how I felt then, as a human, and the difference between my past and my present is mind-boggling. Truly. Unless you have experienced the same change, it is beyond the point of comprehension.

And everything was so _beautiful. _I'd never seen the world that way—for me it had always been so dreary! But now, _now _it was really something. The colors, the clarity, the wonder all around me. My God!

But the beauty of a world seen through perfect eyes paled against the lustrous, wondrously warm and wet smell of human blood. A new kind of ache, terrible and powerful, burned in my throat. I knew what would satisfy this hurt without knowing why: I suppose it's just one of those things, that some animals know what comprises their diet. Instinctual. Well, I instinctually knew there was only one way to quell the monster in me, to tame the single-minded hydra, and without considering anything I began to hunt. Viciously and determinedly, I searched the abandoned district for human blood. It chills me to think now what I was like then, a newborn vampire with nothing on my mind but to feast. It hurts me more to think of where my chase brought me.

As I walked briskly and resolutely through the abandoned district, I knew nothing but my thirst. I could feel new strength pulsing through my body and I understood that nothing was beyond my power. There was nothing that could get in my way, and if it did, it didn't have a chance of survival. It was with this knowledge that I started down a residential street just outside the city center, beyond the fire-damaged place I'd been left. And there it hit me: that scent, _that scent._ I had no control over myself. Well, I say that now—I want to blame the bloodlust, but if I'd stopped to consider what was happening to me, I might have been able to save them.

"They" were the first human lives I took. The strongest scent came from a second-storey stone apartment, a little run-down on the outside but otherwise nice—a little like Emil and Marie's flat, really, now that I think about it. In any case, the scent of the blood in their veins drove me insane. I broke into the bottom floor and followed the smell to their room, where I found a dark-skinned woman and her three children: a presumably teenage girl, a young boy, and an even younger child. The woman screamed. I killed and drained her first, as a moment of conscience told me she should not have to see her children die. She was quickly followed by the youngest child, then the boy, and finally the girl. As I finished with her, an older overweight man with a mustache and a stout red-haired woman burst into the room, most probably the landlord and his wife. Well, have no fear: I got them, too. The scene I left behind me was bloody and brutal. And though these innocent people had given their lives to slake my thirst, I was ravenous still, and the hunt continued.

Slowly I learned my limitations and my strengths. I feasted wildly and often, but as my emotions became less intense and my head cleared, I began to resent what I was and what I did. I loathed the fact that I existed—killing others that I might live. To be a vampire means to lead an existence too twisted, too sick and wrong, and to make some kind of peace with the fact that, beyond all reason and rhyme, you do exist, and find some means of dealing with the pain—or the pleasure, in Lane's case—such a reality presents. I could not stand to pass a mirror and see the glowing red of my eyes, and I could not find it in me to be comforted by the sight of my own terribly beauty. I came to the conclusion that I did not belong among people, and I did my best to avoid them, feasting on rats and stray dogs. Not as satisfying or delicious as human blood, of course, but the benefits to cleaning up the feral animal population and avoiding murder have their perks.

I knew I could not be trusted around people. I spent hours in the library after it had closed, trying to figure out what I was and why, poring over French and German—and finally even English—texts. I found no substantial fact, just myths and tales, including the Vampire Controversy that occurred in Europe close to sixty years before my birth—stories including torches, witch hunts—the usual. I read the discourse of Dom Augustine Calmet, who gathered reports on vampire sightings and put them together. Most of it didn't make sense, but some of it struck true: the speed, the strength, the inability and lack of need to sleep, beauty so intense as to be almost horrifying. I had quickly deduced the nature of my fancy new being, and I think I searched for alternatives so frantically because I could not accept that I was now a killer by my very nature. Gradually, when I had come to know myself pretty well, I found myself nearly giggling at a paragraph in Voltaire's _Philosophical Dictionary_, which had this enlightening passage concerning vampires:

_These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in __Poland__, __Hungary__, __Silesia__, __Moravia__, __Austria__, and __Lorraine__, that the dead made this good cheer._

One night I discovered a small and dusty book at the back of the library called _Les Créatures de Mythe_—The Creatures of Myth—by a relatively obscure French theologian named Arnaud Auguste. I picked up the book mostly because it was written in French, my beloved mother tongue, and I merely wished to rest my eyes on its familiar written form. I did not expect to find anything, really. I found his chapter on vampires and began to read.

LE VAMPIRE

A most terrifying creature, the vampire has been the subject of many stories and myths over thousands of generations. The source of these myths is almost impossible to trace, but they have their beginnings in ancient Egypt, India, and Persia, where accounts exist of similar things. In the Indian "Baital Pachisi", we have tales of _"vetalas", _ghoul-like things who inhabit corpses. And the Indian goddess Kali is presented with fangs of a bouquet of skulls, linking her with the drinking of human blood. In Egypt, the goddess Sekhmet also drank blood.

In Persia, pottery shards depict images of creatures attempting to drink the blood of men. Similar tales from ancient Babylonia include Lilitu, who subsisted on drinking the blood of infants. In Greek mythology do we also find these kinds of stories, including Empusa and Lamia (see "Empusa" and "Lamia"), whose names were later used to describe witches or demons.

None of this was new to me, and I had already read and learned most of it elsewhere. I would have put the book away, but my eye caught the words of the next paragraph:

The vampire is elusive for good reason. It is the belief of the author of this treatise that firstly they stay hidden so as not to expose themselves, as that would be very dreadful for them, certainly. But I will disclose something here that may in fact put my life at risk, by both the immortal and the mortal.

I believe I have made the acquaintance of vampires—yes, that is to say, several of them. They call themselves a "coven"—they are like a family, and they are kind and respectful of one another, as well as of me. I will describe them here, as they are indeed straight from mythology, and so we may have an updated account of their kind.

The vampires are tremendously strong and highly talented, adept at almost everything. Everything about them is designed to attract humankind, from their melodious voices to their hauntingly pale skin and their wonderfully terrifying black eyes rimmed with red. They are more beautiful than the words of this index can describe. They look like angels, and they appear mostly human without being so at all. They are graceful and charming, and

The page had been torn away. There was nothing more.

I was astounded. Auguste's description sounded so much like me, there could be no mistake that I was, indeed, a vampire. But I had to read more. The rest of the book was too worn to decipher its words; the pages were torn and stained.

But there _had _to be something else. There must be more!

I ransacked the library and found nothing. Nothing at all. I didn't know where else to search. I resolved to come back during daylight hours, holding my breath so as not to smell the people around me. I would have to ask.

And I did. The librarian was a little blonde thing who spoke with a slurred kind of German, her accent so thick it would have been difficult for my human ears. But with my new ones, her voice was quite clear. And she stared at me like she was staring into the sun.

She checked the registry for works by Arnaud Auguste and came up with only one. But it was the one I wanted.

"Do you know who he was?" I asked her, my curiosity getting the better of me so that I was forced to breathe her (oh, and she smelled delicious) as I followed behind to a dark reference department.

"I don't know much," she admitted. "My father was fond of his books. I read them as a child. But they're so old now—they were published in the 1560s, you know, and not very well. Most of the small collection that exists today is seriously damaged or unreadable in some way. They're very hard to find anymore. It's too bad, really. Auguste is fascinating. He was a philosopher, I think, born in France and living in England. I used to have this big book of famous philosophers and I remember his name being in it. It said he was quite famous in the English court there, and he had something like a cult following. People loved his investigations of the weird and the supernatural. It couldn't have helped the witch hunts much. " Her tiny hand searched across the spines of different books, seeking the right one.

"Why were his works so badly made?"

"You know, I'm not really sure. I think it probably had something to do with the fact that they were so popular so suddenly, even for the era. The printers probably sacrificed quality for quantity."

"That's too bad," I said, my voice nonchalant but my insides pounding for more. "Did he write many?"

"A couple, but there's no way of knowing for sure. The only ones I've ever seen were his index of mythical creatures, his published journals, and a short story he wrote once. The autobiographical journal is listed in the registry in this section, and I know I've seen it. It's here somewhere. But this section is a nightmare, to be honest—I'm not surprised you couldn't find it!"

Her tone was cheery. She didn't know at any moment I could kill her, and she didn't know I had broken into her library to find out why it was that I could do so.

"Aha!" she cried suddenly, lifting a small fat book from the back of a shelf. "Here you are, sir. _L'autobiographie d'Arnaud Auguste._" She handed it to me, and while I observed its dusty cover my peripheral vision could tell she was staring at me with some curiosity.

"He wrote a lot about vampires," she quietly remarked. I was careful not to meet her eye, and asked only that I might take the book.

"Certainly," she said as we moved toward the front desk. As we made the exchange, a little grin crossed her petite face.

"I am sure Mr. Auguste will have the information you're looking for," she said.

I took the book and left. Perhaps the little librarian had understood that which I assumed she could not. But I had to hand it to her: if she knew what I was, she knew that I would do her no harm. That all I wanted of her was answers.

—

It turned out that Auguste was something of a megalomaniac. His published journal detailed the time he spent with a vampire coven in England, under the court of first Mary Tudor and then her sister, Elizabeth. He was a paid philosopher who was taken in by a group of apparently very charming vampires who didn't mind if he studied them. Auguste was completely fascinated by them, from their strength to their various special powers. He was entranced by their beauty. He was in love with each of them. His writings are feverish and obsessive, even to the point where they made him one.

This seems to have pleased Auguste beyond words. His descriptions of life as a newborn vampire are completely in sync with my experiences as one. I was amazed: there was no hiding from the truth, now, and the things that my creator had failed to teach me were all here. Everything I'd wanted to know about being an immortal. It satisfied every query, answered every thought.

But as I delved deeper into the book, I wondered if Lane had really failed to teach me at all.

_Today, May the twelfth, 1562, is the one-year anniversary of my immortality, and there will come a day when my mortal life is so far behind me I will no longer need to reference it even in my own mind. I wish this day would come with greater speed._

It did not seem that Mr. Auguste had given much consideration to the thing he had become. His words were all quite self-important, as I assume the man had been, bloated with ego and pride.

_The extremely strong emotions I experienced when I was first made have faded considerably. Reason and patience have returned to me, which will enable me to move about in society once more. At last, I can feed as a civilized creature. My thirst is not so great, either, though it remains constant. Controllable, but constant. But I must not think of this currently, and write what I plan to do now that I am capable of acting like a man again._

_My other vampire friends have moved on. I elected to stay in England for the time being to finish this book. I cannot say where they have gone, but their departure marks the fact that I am alone now, alone with eternity. I cannot be Arnaud Auguste ever again, looking the way I do—devilishly angelic, like a painting. I cannot return to court under the same name. I must reinvent myself. I must give myself a new name and style to accommodate the impressive and wonderful creature that I am._

_My father came from a very small French village where he raised sheep to support me after my mother had died. His name was__ Eleyenni. My father was a great man and an honorable one, and I am going to call myself after him. If one pronounces his name slowly, it sounds like this: EL-AY-EN-EE. Spelled, it produces "LANE". It occurs to me also that the French word for "wool" is _laine_. I will be called, then, Lane, but I do not have any current desires for a surname._

_My plan is this. I know myself to be a great writer and philosopher, perhaps more so than any other of my generation. I have wonderful, new things to say, and now I have all the time in the world to say them. This is a magnificent gift—the gift of time. It is my desire to give it to others. I want to give the proficient ones and the talented ones time to become truly great. So many of my mortal friends and acquaintances have died young, from accidents or falling prey to fevers and diseases. I cannot stand it. It is intolerable that talent is so quick to die. I will search Europe for the greatest talents and skill, in any field, and I will make them immortal. There is no reason __why brilliance should ever go dim._

Had I been breathing, I would have asphyxiated. Had a heart been beating inside me, it would have stopped.

I had searched for information about my nature and what it meant, trying to fill the gap and answer the questions my creator had not bothered to. And here I was, with the solution in my hands, only to find that the one who had taught me everything was, after all, Lane.

And he had not changed much in two-hundred and sixty years.

I would find him. I would travel Europe and find him. I wasn't sure why, I just felt that I needed to. I needed to see him face-to-face. I hated what he had done to me, and I needed to _find him._

I did not know then that fate had other plans for me.

**Note: Okay, kids, here's the deal. I can't decide if this chapter is really stupid or really cool, and it looks like this story is going to be WAY longer than I originally thought. Depending on where the story goes, this chapter might not even be important. So I'm going to keep writing and uploading on my website, but I think I'm gonna stop uploading on . What do you all think about that?**


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